Corporatism: A Love Story

Michael Moore recently visited George Washington University to do some capitalist-style promotion for his new flick Capitalism: A Love Story and got a little more than he bargained for during the audience Q&A. Check out the clip below where college libertarian Chad Swarthout gets Moore to admit that the real problem is "corporatism" and "giving too much power to government."

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Without watching it, I’m going to guess that it’s hilarious that Reason is now to a certain, limited extent promoting my plan to go to events and AskToughQuestionsOnVideo and then upload it to Youtube.

Of course, I’ve been promoting that plan without much of any help since February 2007.

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Here’s the plan: you sit there and watch the game, and I’ll go do all your work for you. Don’t worry: I’ll be everywhere and do everything. You don’t have to help yourself, I’ll do it all!

But, seriously, here are a couple healthcare questions for townhalls that I posted on August 14, right in the middle of “townhall season”. If anyone had helped promote that plan, we might have a) blocked UHC, b) undercut the MSM, and c) discredited a few pols. Instead, all your leaders did is encourage you to go to meetings and act like baboons, throwing tantrums in – at the end of the day – helping Obama.

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It was embarrassing. Moore admits that government is the primary cause of the problem and his solution is more government. I would actually like to have seen the kid debate the guy in a different setting.

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Actually, he goes on to basically describe employee-owned businesses. Nothing wrong with those.

The problem is that Moore has been corrupted by the labor union mindset, which tells workers that they can never aspire to be anything more than just labor. You could see it at work when the UAW refused to buy out GM. The pension fund that the UAW oversaw was 100x the value of all of the outstanding GM stock just before the government took it over. But buying GM would have put the union in the uncomfortable position of being management. And if the union is management, what can the union direct worker anger towards?

Well, he does admit that what we have now is not a true free market system, but after that we part company. Fast.

When our brave, floppy-haired young college libertarian suggests that too much power in the hands of government is the problem, Moore can only sputter that government is supposed to be there to help us! And that’s about where I gave up.

Moore never mentions the real problem with conflating capitalism with corporatism, and that real problem is the growth of NewSpeak. Another perfectly-good word is being ruined in the service of his own partisan politics.

Not to be an ingrate, but next time it would be nice to have a little warning that Moore stops making sense after about 1.30. I sat through that whole 8+ minute thing waiting in vain for the kid to PWN his fat stupid ass.

I love the way he talks about the economy. He speaks about it as if it were a magic bus that needs to be steered and controlled. Better yet, he wants to make sure that everyone on the bus gets to have a hand on the wheel.

He should really just pick a paradigm and stick with it. Either the state should do everything or individuals should control their own lives.

This did not help my blood pressure one bit. Of course, I didn’t expect it to so there you go.

I wish that our floppy-haired college-boy libertarian questioner would’ve asked as a follow up, if making 500 times the amount of the poorest worker is so horrible, THAN WHY THE FUCK DOES HE DO IT, LAUGHING ALL THE WAY TO THE BANK???

The amount of hypocrisy and douchebaggery contained in just EIGHT MINUTES of watching this creep is unbelievable.

Does it occur to Moore that there may be not a great need for English Lit majors in society and pressing need for Taco Bell managers (and similar jobs)? And that the Taco Bell managers are contributing to society? That doing some hard and perhaps unpleasant work does not preclude you from acheiving great things, but may in fact, help prepare you to do them?

How many people who have acheived great things throughout history took off for a two year vacation in their early to midtwenties?

Moore lives in a fantasy world that does not exist, never existed, and never can exist.

Where was the insult? MJ said there is not a pressing need for English Lit majors, not that they are somehow tarnished for being Taco Bell managers. I’ve met many a smarter manager of a business than a degree-holder.

I think he’s basically saying that if the government took care of everyone’s health care and education, and housing and job advancement, and started punishing success by limiting salaries, well then everyone would be happy and free. The state would just melt away.

Doesn’t he realize that one can actually participate democratically within the corporate structure by purchasing one or more shares of the company’s voting stock? You can even get up at the shareholder’s meeting and raise hell over executive compensation, too.

Of course, you run the risk of getting voted down. I’m almost certain that’s not what MM thinks of when he says “democracy.”

Didn’t look like much a victory to me. Michael Moore got to spew his misinformed nonsense while the “libertarian” stood like a statue, listening. And Moore got several rounds of applause from his admiring audience. It made me sick to watch it.

Well, it’s hard for a questioner to keep a panelist on topic in that format. Unfortunately, Moore never seemed to wrap his mind around the guy’s point about government power being the problem and mostly ignored it.

Moore was coherent for about two minutes, then he realized what the real outcome of his prescription was: Corporatism squared. So he babbled on about how, in some miraculous and unexplained process, giving the Central State is going to ennoble and enlighten it so that it finally starts filling potholes, educating students and curing Granny’s vericose veins.

Bless young Chad for getting up there. I’m shocked that some of Michael Moore’s usually logically inconsistent drivel actually met some criteria for veracity in his answers. He even admitted belatedly that French education wasn’t “free.” Saints preseve us!

Oh course, GWU can be a dangerous place. 20 years ago I got ‘excommunicated’ by the GWU Objectivists after dinner with them, for asking a hard question about the ethics of financing militaries.

I wear it as a badge of honor, as I happened to be with one of the founders of the ISIL when it happened. The Objectivists in New Hampshire seem to have good senses of humor, though, so maybe times have changed.

Every corporation is a contractual entity; a form of partnership with the government to conduct commerce under unique protections in lieu of collecting taxes and paying them to the government along with other taxes and fees.

A corporation by definition is a totalitarian enterprise. It has to be. Every corporation is a fascist entity ruled by an inner clique led by le despot de jour, however benign.

Corporatism is a problem because, politically speaking, corporations of every tax status have become the dominant “known persons” interacting with our government. You cannot see a federal representative or head unless you represent a corporation claiming to represent some industry or issue.

This gives Capitalism a bad rap. Capital exists under every governmental form. Capital is politically neutral. It’s the way access to Capital is allowed that determines the state of the State. Capital served the Soviets no different than the Dali Lama. The benefit differences are products of the philosophy and skill involved. Capital doesn’t care if you squander it or create more. It just doesn’t care. That’s what makes it Capital.

i’m still not sure if you’re a troll or a retard. i lean more toward you being retarded since you are easily offended as any retard would be. people are “10000000000%” sure they are not the baby’s father on Maury, never in agreement with Michael Moore.

I don’t think Moore has any idea what he thinks or beleives. You could probably get him to agree that the Easter Bunny is the problem. Moore just figured out a schtick that makes him money and sells his movies and went with it. Things like coherence and thoughfulness really were not part of the bargain

His comments about student loans in his day are a crock. I am of his generation and when I went to college I had to get a student loan from a bank, because there sure weren’t any of the low intrest loans from the student aid office he remembers.

My student loans from private banks were absurdly adminstered and amazingly un-friendly to the customer; later when they went through the government everything was smooth as silk and very customer friendly. Really. I remember banks bitching about how onerous student loans were, and then the government decided “hey, you keep bitching about them, we will do them ourselves.” Of course the banks through a fucking hissy-fit “oh no, you can’t do that, we need those loans!”

Libertarians lauding the private sector as so efficient and remarkable make me think “these guys have never worked in the private sector.” It’s a fucking mess times 10 bros.

So let me get this straight, currently we pay around 30% of everything we earn, but we don’t get squat from the government to show for it. They can’t even ‘fix the potholes in front of our house’.

So the obvious solution is to submit more of our earnings to the altruistic overlords who know what is good for us. Since 30% won’t even fix a pothole, sounds like we’ll need to go 100% and abolish all private property, if we want our needs to be taken care of for ‘free’. People get real productive when there is no tie between how hard they work and their wealth.

Moore, do us all a favor and take up residence in that French workers paradise. You’ll get along well there, they don’t shower either.

The kid lifted only soft balls to Moore. He may be an incipient libertarian, but he looks too impressed with Moore’s celebrity to challenge his contradictions and idiotic statements in earnest. Yeah, health care and education is not really free in France, it’s paid for by other people’s taxes, but that’s the way the French want it; they are happy to pay higher taxes. At that point, as a libertarian, I would have asked at least a few questions, in no particular order, instead of nodding in awed agreement: 1. Let’s assume the French approve of that kind of wealth trasfer from one pocket into another. Good for them, if that’s the way they want it. How’s that relevant to the U.S., a much more complex and differently structured society? 2. How much did he pocket in profit from his films as compared to the lowest worker on the set? What was the ratio? (Wink-wink: subtantial! It shouldn’t matter whether Moore chose to donate the profit to, say, Auto Workers Union or Saint Jude’s, or buy a mansion; it’s his choice.) 3. Had Moore lived, full-time, in Cuba, does he think he’d been able to build a career and a fortune speaking the opposite of what he advocates?? He’d be in jail or in the sugar cane re-education fields in no time. He’d be forced to learn songs about Fidel and Commandante Che Guevara to sing to forget the breakback, mind-numbing work. 4. Could you have said the same things you said against Bush in the U.S. against Castro as a Cuban citizen and still live a free life? What gets to me is the sorry state young libertarian thinking is in, as proved by this GW clip. Criticism of “corporatism” is a faddish, politically-correct reaching-out to Marxist/Leninists for soft libertarians to gain some intellectual/academic derivative traction.

2. How much did he pocket in profit from his films as compared to the lowest worker on the set? Since the movie was produced by a subsidiary of Viacom, I would ask what his salary is compared to the lowest paid of any of Viacom’s employees.

I stand corrected, but, as a former commie ‘mankrut'(the word can be googled) i have a hard time understanding all the nuances of capitalism in the real, 21st century world–even after 20 years of de-programming! Most mankruti never recover from the zombie condition. But when you do–what an awakening!

I remember when my parents got our first microwave. I believe we were the first ones on our block to get one. It was delivered by truck, and I seem to remember it costing around $1200. This was in about 1980.

Now look at what capitalism has done. You can get a microwave with more cooking power and features for one-tenth the price. And keep in mind that $1200 in 1980 would be about $3100 today. I so hate capitalism for bringing something to my household that has made life easier.

Yeah, I got my first microwave 5 years ago, but I got to read whatever i wanted without the Secret Police/People’s Commissar looking over my shoulder and being invited to a “discussion” in his office in the basement when what i was reading was out-of-the-party-line. That was sheer esthetic beauty. I’ll never forget.

You could almost see the smoke rising from MM’s ears as the cognitive dissonance melted his brain. All he could do at that point was change the subject and lament that we aren’t France. What he forgot to tell the students is that in France for those 25 and under the unemployment rate is almost twice that of the US.

GASP! Michael Moore admits that the name of the film should have been corporatism! Then he goes on to explain why corporatism isn’t working properly, thus corrupting what capitalism is supposed to be about.

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No MNG, He does a better job of entertaining people, just like Rush Limbaugh does and Bill O’Reilly does.

Which is just fine.

Of course, the fact that he is a hypocrite that believes the path to freedom lies in increasing the amount of forcible wealth transfer and in limiting people’s choices makes him completely mock-worthy regardless of how good a job he does in entertaining people.

And, incidentally, according to your metrick, Britney Spears is even smarter than Michael Moore. Do you sincerely believe this?

I would have preferred to see a video where the questioner so completely confounded Moore that Moore turned red, then blue, then white and collapsed with an aneurism in a dribbling pile of excrement relieving death on stage.

Moore talks about coercive health care, education, etc? like it is a panacea. Alexis de Tocqueville warned about this sort of government as one of the danger of democracy. I tend to agree.

“Above this race of men stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications and to watch over their fate. That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild. It would be like the authority of a parent if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual childhood: it is well content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing. For their happiness such a government willingly labors, but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that happiness; it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their inheritances: what remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living? … Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.”

I thought it was strange that he thought the education should be free. Who is then going to pay for it. The people for the rest of their lives are. Then he talked about how they could not live their dreams because of the student loans. Should the rest of us fund their dreams and not our own? He seems to think that shit just happens and it gets paid for. He never seems to connect just how it gets paid for and who does the paying. It just happens. What an amazing world he must live in if he thinks that.

It’s illustrative of Moore’s ignorance and/or deceit that he would cite the Sorbonne as an educational example. Its President recently announced the drop-out rate: 73% the first year, 47% the second year, 42% the third year! For more details, see http://www.understandfrance.or…..ation.html and http://www.hwelty.com/Me/Diary.html.

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Michael Moore although strong in his opinions does bring up a lot of good questions and he provides facts in his reasoning most of the time so he’s worthwhile to hear out. Everyone has their own opinion and is allowed that.

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